[idn] Registration rules and Canonicalisation rules

[Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com>]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, RJ Atkinson wrote:
> At 15:51 21/08/00, Keith Moore wrote:
> >I don't see any way to make the registration rules "global" without 
> >imposing some language's assumptions on users of other languages 
> >which do not share those assumptions.  and that IMHO is not acceptable.
> 
> None the less, this WG had previously agreed  earlier this year
> that we needed to have the same canonicalisation/normalisation rules 
> apply all over in order to be interoperable.
> 
> You would pose the question of whether we want to interoperate
> globally or not.  I believe the answer of that has to be that
> global interoperability is mandatory, not negotiable.

Ran and Keith don't seem to be communicating.  Let me see if I can help.

Keith says that "registration rules" probably cannot be global.  Ran
says that "canonicalisation/normalisation rules" must be global.  I
happen to agree with both of them about this, and there's no conflict
here, because registration rules and canonicalisation rules are not the
same thing.

Registration rules are administrative procedures that prohibit one
person from registering a name that is too similar to a name that
somebody else has already registered.  A silly example using the
english/american language would be to say that the names "color" and
"colour" may not be registered to different people.  A less silly
example using the french language would be to say that the names "cafe"
and "caf<e+acute>" may not be registered to different people.

Canonicalisation rules, in the present context, are rules about
whether the DNS software thinks that two names (which might initially
appear to be different) are equivalent.

It's quite easy to imagine a world in which all DNS software thinks
that "cafe" and "caf<e+acute>" have different canonical forms, yet
some registries do and other registries do not permit "cafe" and
"caf<e+acute>" to be registered to different people.

--apb (Alan Barrett)